Human Flower Project

Thursday, January 26, 2012

AMDG—With Flowers in Macon

“To the greater glory of God”—fourteen churches lay their flowers in a Macon, Georgia, Catholic sanctuary.

Members of Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Church (l-r) Rosa Harris and Paula Cacavias brought flowers and an icon to St. Joseph Catholic Church in Macon, Georgia, last week.
Photo: Beau Cabell, for Macon Telegraph

You know you’ve got a good thing going when people ask: “Why didn’t we think of this sooner?”

That’s been the question this past week in Macon, Georgia, with the city’s first display of interfaith unity. As part of Macon’s Old City Flower Festival, the flower guild members of St. Joseph Catholic Church decided to ask other congregations to come together and decorate.

St. Joseph’s pastor, the Rev. Allan McDonald, “admits he was skeptical “ that other churches would agree to participate and now “says he’s thrilled.” Members of thirteen congregations – Presbyterian, Greek Orthodox, Episcopalian, Baptist and Methodist – have taken part.

Roslyn Rawls Platt of Vineville Baptist Church, in Macon, Georgia, took part in the
show of interfaith unity.
Photo: Beau Cabell, for Macon Telegraph

Liz Fabian of the Macon Telegraph writes a wonderfully detailed story, describing the flower varieties they chose and the designs they installed.

“Since St. Joseph is the host church, they are trying something new in creating a blanket of flowers that will be propped up on the steps leading to the sanctuary. [Steve] Gonser has taken carnations, mums and lily buds and created a Jerusalem Cross.

Cathedral of St. John the Baptist Savannah, Georgia
Photo: Savannah Cathedral

“‘I took the design and instead of putting four small equal crosses (around a main cross), I replaced them with different crosses all the denominations use,’ he said.

“The Canterbury cross, Byzantine cross and Celtic cross are above the initials AMDG that represent the Latin, Jesuit motto of ‘to the greater glory of God’” (Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam).

Gonser and Elaine Schmitt, also of the St. Joseph flower guild, were inspired by a Memorial Day floral collaboration at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Savannah. (We had the unexpected joy of visiting this church last month, the most marvelous Christmas decoration we’ve ever seen; the crèche included, along with sheep and oxen, a Low Country alligator.)

Maybe next year’s week of Interfaith Unity in Macon will include non-Christians as well.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Floral Demonstrations Grow Thorns

There’s a new spirit abroad in floral protests, not just “in your face” but “on your case.”

Striking junior doctors marched in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh Jan. 16 with “sympathy” flowers for the chief minister who has yet to meet their demands.
Photo: Raju. V

Are flowers the new pink slip?

Since 2004, we’ve been reporting on how flowers feature in protest across the world, from the pink gladioli brandished by Cuba’s Damas de Blanco, to bouquets laid outside Shanghai’s Google headquarters—when the government threatened to suspend the company’s operations in China.

In these demonstrations, flowers proudly identify the bearers (the pink gladiolus has become the emblem of the Cuban civil rights marchers) or they express solidarity with the recipient (for example, the Internet giant).

But increasingly, we see floral protests taking another form: rather than standing FOR an organization or being presented TO someone, they’re delivered AGAINST.

The most recent example comes from Andhra Pradesh, India. Last week, junior doctors (known in the U.S. as medical students, interns and residents) took flowers to the Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy along with placards reading “Get well soon CM.”

The show of mock-sympathy was an early demonstration in the junior physicians’ strike, now in its 9th day. “The junior doctors have been boycotting elective duties since January 14, demanding regular payment and a hike of stipends, reduction of rural service, health insurance and improvement of emergency infrastructure.” (Interesting to note that Indian doctors don’t have health insurance!)

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Saturday, January 14, 2012

Ash Assassin

Taking out one endangered tree seems to cause more alarm than the threat to a whole species. Allen Bush takes out an ash and takes on the neighborhood.

The Emerald Ash Borer (Agrilus planipennis B)
Photo: Zin

By Allen Bush

Arborists cut down our big white ash tree a few weeks before Christmas. It had stood in the front yard since 1974. My neighbors weren’t happy with me. My pleas for any understanding fell on deaf ears throughout the holidays in coffee shops, at parties, on the street. I promised everyone that there would be a better tree that goes in its place.

“Good luck,” I was told.

“We’re tree huggers!” one critic added. No one seemed to know what kind of tree it was, or even care why I’d taken it out. None of that mattered. Our tree was their tree. “What a bummer,” one passerby lamented.

At least the neighbors weren’t marching down Top Hill Road in solidarity, carrying Louisville Slugger baseball bats made from white ash wood, at least not yet. “I see you took the down the tree,” is not a neutral declaration. It means I have looted the neighborhood. I am the ash assassin.

Nobody cared that the tree removal was a preemptive strike, ahead of the emerald ash borer (EAB). This insect has already launched an assault on tens of thousands of ash trees in Louisville alone. 

Our white ash (Fraxinus americana) should never have been planted in the first place, at least not in our front yard. (White ash grows naturally from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, south to northern Florida.  It extends west to eastern Texas and eastern Minnesota.)

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Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Domestication, Under This Tree

The old trees of Cambridge and Oxford are riddled with association. How do you elude history and fall into the nature of nature?

Jesus Green

Essay and photos by John Levett

I spent my career in primary education. I don’t miss what it became. I left teaching in 2003 and haven’t set foot into a school since.

If I were asked what I think of the changes that have taken place over the last decade I couldn’t give a coherent answer, no longer following beyond the headlines.

My dissociation with primary education came to me a few months back when I was passing by Park Street School in Cambridge. It’s a long-established church-aided school close by Jesus Green. In good weather the children use the Green as their playground. What took my ear as I walked past was the singing from the school hall.

Under the spreading chestnut tree,
Where I knelt upon my knee,
We were as happy as could be,
Under the spreading chestnut tree.

For those of my generation and before, the song will be familiar, not for its words but for the actions that go with it—the replacement of the word by the action (spread, chest, nut, tree). There’s a film of King George VI (he of the voice) doing the business at a scout camp. I recall it always dissolving into a confusion of arms, hands and elbows.

What made me pause that day was the surprise that ‘singing’ as nothing beyond its appreciation and fun still had a place within a primary school. I’d assumed that anything that didn’t make an instrumental contribution to capitalist accumulation had been stricken from the curriculum.

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